Should You Crowdfund the Cost of Having a Baby?

A growing number of would-be parents are asking friends and strangers to help pay for adoptions, in-vitro procedures, and surrogate pregnancies.

By
Lilit Marcus

Jan 14, 2015

Levi Brown

Jessica Haley had a secret that was gnawing away at her — after years of trying, she and her husband, Sean, her high school sweetheart, were told they had a less than 1 percent chance of conceiving a baby naturally. In another time, that might have ended any hope the Melbourne, Florida, couple had of parenthood. But this is the 21st century, a time of innovation both for fertility treatments like IVF and for the Internet's power of spreading the word. Jessica would utilize both of those innovations in her quest to become a mom.

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Jessica kept her fertility problems private, not even telling her parents. But years of friends' baby showers and questions of "Are you next?" started to take their toll. In June 2011, she posted a link on Facebook. It was to a page she had created called Help the Haleys Have a Baby on a new website for crowdfunding called Indiegogo.com, where friends and strangers can donate money toward user-created campaigns. The couple's campaign sought to raise money toward the cost of their IVF.

Jessica, an operations director for a nonprofit that helps people struggling with mental-health issues, heard about Indiegogo through a friend. Although the site and rival Kickstarter were then becoming popular with aspiring artists seeking funding for creative projects, Jessica had another idea. "I thought, if people can raise money for all these things, then why not raise money to have a baby?" she says.

Initially, Jessica posted a fund-raising goal of $5,000, much less than the total of $16,000 she and Sean actually needed to cover the medicines, egg retrievals, doctor visits, and other costs associated with IVF. Friends and family were the first donors to their online campaign, and soon donations came in from long-lost friends who had heard about the campaign through Facebook. About 20 percent of the total funds came from complete strangers who were touched by the Haleys' story and wanted to help. People dealing with their own fertility issues sent compassionate emails, which Jessica says helped her realize she wasn't alone. Altogether, the page brought in $8,000 over four months, a higher goal that the Haleys had set to cover a payment that they discovered they would need to make before they could start treatment. Beyond Indiegogo, relatives sent checks, the couple scrimped and saved, and they put some of the costs on a credit card. Jessica created the page in June 2011 and met her goal of beginning IVF in October.

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But while the Haleys were able to harness the power of the web to raise money, it also left them open to criticism. "I was at such a defeated point in my life," Jessica says about the period she spent fund-raising online. "Strangers posted comments on our page and sent us direct messages that were harsh. It's one of the things I've struggled with," she admits. "I don't want to ever feel guilty for experiencing pregnancy or having a kid who looks like my husband. If your arm is broken and you can go to a doctor who can fix your arm, no one says anything. But if I say my uterus is broken and I want to get it fixed, [people think] there's something wrong with that."

Many would-be parents on sites like Indiegogo are confronted with questions like, "If you can't afford IVF, how can you afford a baby?" or comments like, "Just adopt instead." One would-be mom who is paralyzed from the waist down and uses a wheelchair turned to crowdfunding and is now expecting a baby through surrogacy. Multiple commenters told her that her disability meant she shouldn't have a baby because she wouldn't be able to care for it later on. Another wrote, "Since when did it become okay to ask virtual strangers to fund things you want? I would like a bigger house, a new car, and a safari trip to Africa. Too bad I can't afford it. Such is life."

Indiegogo co-founder Danae Ringelmann acknowledges that these comments can be tough. "Raising money online is new for people," she says. She encourages would-be fund-raisers to focus on the positive and to tap their Customer Happiness Team, whose job is to engage with users and keep them from giving up.

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After just one round of IVF, the Haleys got the news they'd dreamed of — the IVF worked. Unlike many of Indiegogo's other campaigns, Jessica's page hadn't resulted in a self-published novel or a photography project. It had resulted in a human being. She announced the news of her pregnancy at nine weeks, earlier than the 12 most doctors recommend, because she believed she owed it to the people who had chipped in. She also felt obligated to share with her Indiegogo followers some of the gorier details of her IVF, like the fact that she had to get hormone shots in her butt or the specifics of how many embryos survived harvesting. The way she saw it, it wasn't just the Haleys' own story and happy ending — it was everybody's who had helped. Their son, Landon, was born on April 7, 2012.

The Haleys believe Landon was America's first crowdfunded baby. Now, Indiegogo and similar sites like GoFundMe and Fundly regularly feature pages from people who hope to become parents by raising funds to pay for adoption, IVF, or surrogacy. Kickstarter, however, has always had a policy against such campaigns. (Jessica initially attempted to use Kickstarter but switched to Indiegogo.) Kickstarter also requires campaigns be fully funded before the crowdfunder gets any money, while other sites allow people to keep whatever has been raised. Indiegogo says its plan from day one was to leave the door wide open. "Our belief is that people should fund what matters to them," Ringelmann says. "No rules, no application. The Haley baby campaign proved the importance of an open platform."

The number of "life events" campaigns on Indiegogo (including crowdfunding for IVF, surrogacy, and adoption costs, as well as things like weddings, honeymoons, medical bills, and funeral expenses) jumped 30 percent from 2013 to 2014. Because of this growth, in December, Indiegogo launched a stand-alone site, Indiegogo Life, just for these kinds of campaigns.

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One common criticism is that the many crowdfunding campaigns competing for attention can start to resemble an American Idol audition, with everyone vying for the most heartbreaking backstory in order to score votes … or, in this case, dollars. The stories are usually written by a woman who goes into sometimes excruciating detail about her health issues, problems conceiving, and how sad she feels when she sees her friends with their babies. Many link to personal blogs, Facebook pages, or Twitter accounts. And even when campaigns reach their goal like the Haleys' did, these pages — which feature details of a baby's conception, adoption, or genetic origin — can remain on the Internet forever for anyone to access, a fact that Indiegogo's site clearly states. Elizabeth Yuko, Ph.D., a bioethicist at Fordham University who studies reproductive ethics and the changing nature of pregnancy, cautions would-be crowdfunders to keep the baby's identity and personal details off the sites.

Candace Wohl, whose daughter Grayson was delivered via a surrogate in June 2014, used GoFundMe to raise about $2,600 — a small fraction of the total she and her husband needed. On top of that, she sold necklaces on Etsy, held garage sales of items donated by friends and family, and partnered with a local restaurant on a fund-raiser. "There are a lot of misconceptions — people think that if you can't afford to have the baby, you can't afford to take care of one," she says. "While child-rearing costs like day care can be spread out over years, fertility costs are immediate. "Most people don't have that cash on hand."

Although Candace and her husband would like to have at least one more child, they don't plan on fund-raising again. "Morally, I don't feel comfortable with that. We fund-raised for our child. Adding another one to our family is not other people's responsibility. That's extending my hand too far." Two years after having Landon, the Haleys welcomed a second son, Declan, a happy surprise who was born without the help of fertility treatments. The Haleys jokingly call their younger son their BOGO [buy one, get one] Baby.

Jessica has saved local news stories about her crowdfunding efforts and plans to show them to Landon someday so that he can understand the unusual circumstances behind his birth and so that both boys can see how desperately their parents wanted to have them. She and Sean have also paid their gift forward by donating to other online crowdfunding campaigns of couples trying to conceive.

Despite the criticism and the murky waters of sharing intimate details with strangers, Jessica doesn't regret a thing. "Three years ago, I was up at 2 a.m., getting an IVF shot. This morning, I was up at 2 a.m. with my son. The only reason this happened is that more than 100 people donated."

This article was originally published as "Who Crowdfunds a Baby" in the February 2015 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to get the issue in the iTunes store!

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